The long sleeves of the kimono hid the swords at her waist. She would let Aniketos approach her and take him by surprise.
She bent over the book of translations of old myths and tales, intending to give the illusion of reading while she waited for him to enter. She ran her left hand over the page. The paper was smooth and cool beneath her fingers, the indentation of each letter was precise.
There was once a very clever Thief whom no lock could stop and no trap could catch. When there was nothing left in the world of men to challenge him, he decided to steal from the gods. He scaled the ziggurat that led to their glass heaven and climbed over the golden gates to paradise.
The door clicked open, and he entered.
“Find anything of interest?”
She looked up, embarrassed that he had caught her running her fingers over his handwriting. She removed her hand from the book and clasped it in her lap.
“No, you do not need to answer.” He came to stand beside her. “You found the kimono. I shall assume you also found the swords.”
There went the element of surprise. She stood, drawing the short sword and its sheath from her belt in one fluid movement. “You seem relaxed for an unarmed man.”
“You cannot harm me. And I suspect that you no longer want to.”
She took a breath and swung the sword before she had time for second thoughts. The wakizashi was sharp as a laser. It cut through flesh and bone with minimal effort or resistance. Her erstwhile lover’s head landed on the carpet beside his feet.
“So much for your suspicions, Aniketos.”
She watched until his body stopped twitching before wiping the sword with the edge of the shirt she had earlier discarded and replacing it in the saya. She stepped over his body, daintily picking her barefoot way across the dry bits of carpet that weren’t wet and red with her lover’s blood.
She picked up his head and regarded it. Thankfully, his eyes had closed. She didn’t think she could stand to see them again with the life gone from them.
Stupid man. Why had he thought she wouldn’t hurt him? Why had he thought she could be something other than the killer that Darkriver had made of her?
She sat his head down on a worktable beside a jar of glass fragments. She smoothed his hair before pulling her hand back. She had killed the man, she had no right to regret. She had no right to be gentle after the fact.
Mumbai
One year earlier.
“Do you ever regret it?” Arden’s protégé asked her as he reassembled a targeting rifle.
She checked her analog stopwatch, waited for him to finish, and stalled the hands in their tracks with a click of the button. The kid had learned to control his strange ability. He rarely drained power from electrical equipment anymore, but like all hatchlings, his control was not absolute. It would be; she could teach him that.
Until he learned complete control, she relied on mechanical tools that worked through gears and cogs, powered by torque instead of electric current. She taught him to fire antique sniper rifles and pistols, to use knives, arrows, and, of course, the garrote. He was a quick study—the sort of student who would make any teacher proud.
Eden had been right. He would be the best.
He offered the completed weapon for her inspection. The mark on his left hand shone red as fresh blood. It was too distinctive, that mark.
She inspected the rifle. Perfect, as always. She withdrew a pair of black leather gloves from her pocket, and tossed them to him before returning the rifle.
“Put those on and disassemble it. Never let anyone see your hands again.”
He did as she told him, with only a fraction of a second’s delay from the gloves. He arranged the pieces on the ground in front of him for her inspection.
“Do you ever regret it?” the kid asked again. He still had that damned English accent—a perfect example of Received Pronunciation. Someone had spent years teaching this boy to speak like a child of wealth and privilege, and not even Darkriver’s memory thieves had been able to erase the habit. Yet another thing about him that was too distinctive.
She met the kid’s dark, almond-shaped eyes. She had saved his life, and taught him to kill. He was probably the closest thing to a son she would ever have, and the fierce pride she felt for him was probably the closest thing to maternal love she would ever experience.
“Whatever I might have been, I’m a killer now. How can I regret my nature?”
“Not the killing,” he said. “Me. Do you regret lying to Darkriver about what I am? They’ll kill you if they ever discover what you’ve kept from them.”
“The answer’s the same. How can I regret my nature?”
She focused her binoculars on a target in one of the buildings across the street. “Reassemble the rifle and target the man in the black suit. Put the bullet through his heart.”
How could she regret her nature? Aniketos had known she was a killer. He should have guessed she would kill him eventually. Why this foreign pang of remorse? She slumped into the chair beside the writing desk. She ran her finger across his handwriting, leaving a bloody smear to mark her path.
“What is it about that story that fascinates you so?”
Arden jumped up to find Aniketos leaning against the worktable where she had left his head. He was naked and perfect, without a hint of blood on his bronze skin—though the carpet beneath his bare feet was still soaked in it.
“How?”
“Are you ready to listen?” He approached and took the wakizashi from her nerveless hands.
She turned to the book on the writing table. “You’re the Thief in this story, aren’t you?”
His pale eyes flicked down to the book before returning to her face. “Would you believe me if I answered yes?”
“Where’d you hide the key?”
He smiled, closemouthed and mysterious. “I thought you did not care for myths and fairytales.”
“Maybe I should start.”
She pivoted on her left foot and kicked out sideways with her right. Her foot shot past his shoulder and connected with the jar full of glass shards on the worktable. The jar tipped over, the lid slipped off, and blue-green bits of glass spilled out across the surface of the worktable.
She watched. The pieces of glass began to rise. “…and their heaven shattered when it fell to Earth. All this glass—you’re rebuilding the heaven from the story.”
“Piece by piece. It helps to pass the time.”
She met his eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“What I have asked—your help in exchange for my protection. Darkriver cannot harm me. If you do as I wish, I will keep you safe from them for the rest of your life. I am quite possibly the only person on the planet who can truthfully make such an offer.”
Arden shook her head. “I don’t think I have much of a choice.”
Aniketos smiled. “I have worked very hard to leave you with only one choice.”
“Why?”
He reached out, stroked her cheek, and skimmed his hand over her jaw and down her neck to trace the ring of bruises he left the first time he took her. “Why do men keep tigers as pets? Some sorry quirk of human nature makes us long to tame creatures of dangerous beauty. I escaped mortality, but I am still a man. I wanted you. I took you.”
Arden bit back a bitter laugh as she looked around at his cache of stolen treasures. “Am I another rare thing for your collection? Your eyes are steady as a lunatic’s when you look at me. I’d have to be blind not to notice your desire, and an idiot not to be frightened by it.”
“Frightened?”
“I’m scared of what you want from me, but I’m even more afraid of what I’m willing to give up in order to save my sorry hide.” She flipped the notebook closed and stood. “I’m not saying I want to be good—if I were a good person, I’d be dead now. But I wish I were a better person. I wish I were the kind of person who thought my freedom was worth dying for.”
“You made the right decision, Arden. A
s one who has lived longer than most, I tell you this. There is nothing that is worth dying for. Nothing.”
He offered his hand, and she took it. “Tell me you are mine. Tell me you are mine until the day you die.”
She met his eyes. “On one condition.”
“You bargain with me?”
“Yes. I have a protégé—a kid I trained. When we go get the kid you’re after, we bring him out too.”
Aniketos’ dark brows raised slightly in surprise. “You care that much for another person?”
Did she detect a hint of jealousy in his rough voice? “I made promises to him. I kept secrets from Darkriver. I’ll betray the Corporation, but I won’t sell out the kid.”
“Very well. Say the words.”
She cleared her throat. “I’m yours.”
“Very good.” He lifted her chin with the edge of his hand and kissed her, as if to reward her for her obedience. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. Sandalwood and smoke. Heaven and Hell, was she a sucker.
He broke off the kiss, smiling like a man who had just tamed a tiger. “Come. You should wash the blood from your hands before our guests arrive.”
He led her out of the windowless antiquities room and into the great room. The light was brighter. It took Arden a moment to notice the steel security shutters were open. She let go of his hand and ran to the window. Beyond the tinted, doubled pane of glass was not the city she had left three days before to sneak into Sevastien Aniketos’ penthouse, but mile after mile of barren desert plains.
“You see,” he said. “It would have done you no good to escape.”
Chapter Five
Arden leaned her forehead against the double-paned window and sighed. The interior glass was warm to the touch. She could only imagine what the temperature outside must be. The desert beyond the window was a wasteland. Even the few tough plants that usually lived in such climes were withered and black. Nothing moved, not an animal, not even a breeze. The land was not just barren, it was dead.
“Where is this place?”
“About five miles from Yucca Mountain.”
Arden’s heart gave a painful start of surprise. She pushed away from the glass and whirled to face him. “The entire area around Yucca has been radioactive since the quake of ’02! Did you bring me here to kill me?”
“Relax.” Aniketos laid a hand on her shoulder but it did nothing to calm her. “Rumors of the area’s radiation count have been greatly exaggerated. You should not go outside without a suit, but you are perfectly safe within the compound.”
“This place is identical to the penthouse in Shanghai. You brought me here after you knocked me out.”
“I did not move you. This is the penthouse in Shanghai. The faith that built my fallen heaven states that the way to the home of the gods lies beyond the stairs of a city’s tallest building, and that it is marked by the sign of the gods.”
He pointed to the strange, twining symbol etched into the penthouse’s bronze entry doors. “Those are a fairly simple set of conditions to meet. That doorway will take you to the top of the tallest building of any city in the world.”
She pushed herself away from him, away from the feel of his hand and the warmth of his body. “This is where things get a little too weird for me. You want me to believe in magic and gods and an immortal Thief who stole the key to Life and Death—fine. I don’t have any better explanation for how you put your head back on after I killed you for the third time.
“But this, a secret compound full of stolen art and artifacts that exists in multiple locations at the same time? This is where I draw the line. Next time you want to hoax someone, do try to find a ruse that doesn’t read like it was pasted together from conspiracy theories and old comic books.”
Aniketos spread his hands. “The world is a wider, stranger place than you can imagine, Arden. If gods can wither to dust when men forget their names, what other impossible creatures have been conceived in imagination and born of belief?”
“The way you’re talking, anything at all could be true.”
“Just so.”
She rolled her eyes. She would never get a straight answer from him, and at this point, she wasn’t sure if she wanted one. Every explanation he gave her added another layer of complexity.
She had agreed to betray Darkriver. She was trapped in a radioactive desert compound with a mythical Thief who couldn’t be killed. The whole mess was starting to give her a headache. Or was the headache a symptom of radiation poisoning? She combed her hands through her hair. Good, still there.
Arden groaned. She didn’t want to believe, she didn’t want to understand. She needed something basic, controllable. She opened her eyes and looked up at Aniketos.
She locked her gaze on him. She licked her lips. She pushed him to the floor.
His eyes narrowed, but he let himself fall. “You are not planning to attack me again. That I survived a strangulation, a stabbing and a beheading should prove that your efforts have little effect on my—”
Arden straddled his chest and covered his mouth with her hand. “Shut up, will you? Every time you open your mouth, things get complicated. I’m a simple girl. I like simple things. I like sex and violence in pretty much that order. And since violence doesn’t work on you…”
She leaned down and kissed him, biting at his lower lip until he opened his mouth. She plunged her tongue into his mouth, aggressive and hungry. She felt his pulse speed up as she stretched her body out across his. She kissed her way down his neck and ran her tongue over the scar above his heart, exploring the hard, puckered knot of skin with her mouth even as her hands roamed lower.
His hands were on her, too. He pushed the edges of the kimono aside to trace the contours of her legs. He cupped her buttocks and ran his hands up over her lower back, kneading the muscles there, calling forth the memory of all that his talented hands could do.
She traced her tongue down his chest, alternately laving and biting his nipples and skin. She was rough, but Aniketos had proven that he was not a man she needed to be gentle with. She ran her tongue over his flat abdomen and his muscles twitched beneath her lips.
Yes, this was what she’d needed—a simple meeting of bodies, a struggle for control that she could and would win. The world felt right again with him beneath her, his hard body and harder cock. There were no questions, no allegiances and no explanations. Just the salty taste of his skin, the drumbeat of his heart, the slow tremor of pleasure in his muscles as his body succumbed to her will.
His cock was already hard when she put her lips to it, straight as a flagpole and thick as a weapon. She traced the vein that ran the length of his shaft before stretching her mouth open to engulf the rounded head of his sex. His hips flexed involuntarily, a quick tremor that thrust his cock back toward her throat.
What a heady feeling, to have the entire focus of a man’s attention trapped between her lips. She wrapped her hand around the base of him and pressed her mouth lower on his shaft, sucking and growling until his hand fisted in her hair and he urged her off him.
“My turn.”
He grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. He yanked the tie on the kimono open, baring her body to his greedy gaze. She let the heavy, crumpled silk slide from her shoulders and hid her smile as she watched his cock swell at the sight of her.
He grabbed her wrists and wrapped the silk sash around them, making a sloppy knot in his hurry to take control. She let him think he’d bound her, let him pretend she could be so easily subdued.
He pulled her toward the stone fireplace against the mirrored wall and secured the sash to one of the iron sconces that flanked the fireplace. He stood back to admire his handiwork. The mirrored wall reflected the front of her body, even as his hands and gaze ran over the back of her.
She smiled at her reflection, and her reflection smiled back—a pair of conspirators plotting to bring down their man. She arched her back and allowed a breathy, high-pitched moan to escape her thro
at. She watched his reflection in the mirror. His eyes widened with desire, his nostrils flared as he sucked in a breath. And then he was on her, body pressing against hers, his shaft thrust between her thighs, his hands engulfing her breasts.
He slid one hand down to tease her clit and kept the other one at her breast. Three days and he knew what she wanted. Three days and he sought out all the sweet spots on her body with the unerring aim of an old lover.
How could he know her so well in only three days? She remembered that while she had met him three days ago, he had watched her for far longer. He had watched her choose her lovers, watched her fuck them. Had he watched her then as he watched her now? With a madman’s intensity and a starving man’s hunger? Oh, she hoped so.
A new wave of heat curled up from the core of her.
“Did you watch me?” she panted. “Did you watch me with other men?”
He lifted his mouth from her shoulder and met her eyes in the mirror. He had left a crescent-shaped purple bruise on her skin to mark his territory. “Yes.”
He reached between them to guide his cock to her pussy.
“Did you want me?”
“Like a poor man wants plenty.” He thrust into her as he circled her clit with deft strokes of his talented fingers. “I watched you, hating the men who had you and craving the day when I would steal you from their sight.”
“God and the Devil, Thief, you are one sick fuck.” She was close. Her inner muscles clenched, and her thighs and belly seemed to hum with anticipation.
“And that, my lovely murderess, is precisely why you like me.” He thrust into her twice more. His cock glided over her g-spot, and he pressed his fingers on her clit, just the way she liked it.
Her knees wobbled. She made an unwilling, inelegant sound, something between a moan and a shriek. Orgasm hit her like a shove down a hill. She was falling, dizzy, completely out of control. Maybe her eyes rolled back into her head or maybe she was struck blind. Who cared what the reason was—she had no need to worry about trivialities like vision when she stood at the gates of heaven.
Aniketos shuddered within her. His hot, sweaty body came to rest against hers. His skin smelled like sandalwood and smoke, and beneath that, the subtle scent of his body. His breath fanned hot against her shoulder. His hand slid from her breast to rest over her belly.
Like a Thief in the Night Page 6